The website EnvironmentalLeader.com recently praised Marks & Spencer for switching all of its mini wine bottles from glass to "environmentally-friendly" polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic in the UK market. Since when has PET plastic become more environmentally-friendly than glass? From an energy consumption point of view, plastic production uses marginally less energy than glass (2,013 BTUs for PET versus 2,155 BTUs for glass) and perhaps this is where plastic may appear more environmentally-friendly. But if you look at the total life cycle of one single bottle, plastic and glass, you realize that glass is significantly superior:
- Glass containers can be cleaned and reused several times as part of consignment programs. We use milk from the company Harmony Organic (TM) which comes in a glass bottles that the company collects back, cleans and refills. PET bottles should not be reused as they deteriorate very quickly and can present increased health risks.
- Glass is highly recyclable, in fact it can be recycled eternally, because its structure does not deteriorate when reprocessed. Plastic bottles can only be recycled once. They can then simply be downcycled into an item that would not be used for food or drink such as fabric fibres for bags or clothes.
- Because recycled glass uses less energy to be reprocessed into a new glass item when compared to the manufacture of brand new glass, recycled glass has a high intrinsic value as a recycled item. The majority of all glass being offered for recycling is actually recycled (60% in single stream (unsorted) recycling programs, 90% in dual stream, 98% in deposit return), compared with only about 24% with PET plastic (PET and HDPE plastics are the plastic types that offer the highest recycling potential -- overall recycling of all plastics is only about 6%). That being said, the type of PET that has been developed by Marks & Spencer is supposedly impermeable to oxygen, a major requirement to the preservation of wine taste... Would this altered PET bottle be as recyclable as traditional PET bottles, or would it contaminate recycling programs?
More importantly, glass is healthier... while studies have shown that PET tends to leach antimony over time, especially when the contents are heated -- for example, when exposed to the hot summer sun. Glass is not known to leach any dangerous chemicals.
Overall, this initiative by Marks & Spencer seems utterly environmentally unfriendly...
Chantal Plamondon, Co-Owner
LifeWithoutPlastic.com
Sources:
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2010/05/06/marks-spencer-converts-glass-wine-bottles-to-eco-friendly-plastic/
http://www.wasteonline.org.uk/resources/InformationSheets/Glass.htm
http://www.container-recycling.org/facts/all/data/manufacturingenergy.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17707454
